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The San Francisco 49ers will continue practicing at UNLV ahead of Sunday’s Super Bowl LVIII, even as coach Kyle Shanahan acknowledged Wednesday that field conditions are not what he and his team would prefer.
“They were here. We’re practicing on it,” Shanahan said in his media availability after the team’s first full practice in Las Vegas. “Everyone has their preferences. I wish things were better, but we’ll deal with the field as this”.
Shanahan noted that the 49ers would have had to change their entire schedule to make it work on a different field. The 49ers had been weighing their options, including seeking deals to use the Las Vegas Raiders’ practice facility at an opposite time to the Kansas City Chiefs, after testing the field on a walk-through Monday.
“We would have to go too early in the morning and ruin everything,” he said. “This is the best option we have.”
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said Monday that the league had 23 experts and the NFL Players Association visited UNLV’s field and “they all think it’s a very playable surface.” The NFLPA rejected that claim Wednesday.
NFLPA President JC Tretter, speaking at a news conference Wednesday, said he learned that the practice field’s turf was installed incorrectly, but league officials deemed the surface “playable.” UNLV has a pair of artificial surface fields that were covered with natural grass last week. But because there was no surface placed between the artificial field and the new grass, league sources said. The Athleticthe fields had a sponge-like feel.
“That’s a problem,” Tretter said. “Also, before Roger’s press conference on Monday, they said ‘It’s okay because the course is playable.’ When we talked about it last week, we said we needed to raise the bar so that both surfaces are high quality, and then a week later you say, “It’s okay because it’s playable.” Reproducible is not the same standard as high quality. That’s the lowest you can go to say it’s okay. So we can’t speak out of both sides of our mouths to say that the injury data looks like this. We want high quality fields. It’s okay because it’s playable. That’s not what we do. We want high quality surfaces for our players to play and practice on. “I don’t think we have that.”
UNLV’s practice field is within the NFL’s safety threshold, but is on the lower end of the spectrum. An official familiar with the situation said the surface was “incredibly soft” and well below the level of firmness the 49ers are accustomed to at their practice facility and at Levi’s Stadium. The firmness was similar to that of MetLife Stadium, which is universally reviled by the 49ers after several players, including Nick Bosa and Solomon Thomas, suffered serious injuries in a game against the New York Jets in 2020.
49ers quarterback Brock Purdy said Wednesday’s session was not an aggressive practice and only involved light running. The real full-speed practice is scheduled for Thursday and the 49ers have no plans to change venues.
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(Photo: Chris Unger/Getty Images)